The Next Generation of Cybersecurity Experts: A Day on Capitol Hill With GSUSA

Cybersecurity experts from Palo Alto Networks and Girl Scouts of the USA (GSUSA) joined forces on Capitol Hill yesterday to highlight National Cyber Security Awareness Month (NCSAM) and a shared commitment to building a talent pipeline to tackle tomorrow’s toughest cybersecurity challenges. Co-hosted by a bi-partisan group of members of Congress, the event aimed to inspire the next generation of cybersecurity professionals, and encourage a dialogue between the public and private sectors about how to cultivate a diverse pool of talent.

The day began with over 20 Girl Scouts participating in an activity led by our very own cybersecurity experts. Participants created a traceroute map to identify the path that packets of data take to get from a source computer to a destination, and they learned about how cybersecurity professionals can use this process to investigate the details of alleged cybercrimes.

Following the activity, U.S. Reps. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) and Buddy Carter (R-GA) delivered remarks as part of a panel discussion, along with GSUSA CEO Sylvia Acevedo and me.

The panel discussion was led by Girl Scout alumna, Lauren Prox, a Girl Scouts Gold Award winner, who is currently pursuing a degree in industrial engineering at Clemson University. The panel focused on ways in which government and industry might address the cyber workforce gap, and how to make cybersecurity a more alluring career option for young girls.

Palo Alto Networks is the next-generation security company maintaining trust in the digital age by helping tens of thousands of organizations worldwide prevent cyber breaches. With our deep cybersecurity expertise, commitment to innovation, and game-changing Next-Generation Security Platform, customers can confidently pursue a digital-first strategy and embark on new technology initiatives, such as cloud and mobility. This kind of thinking and know-how helps customer organizations grow their business and empower employees all while maintaining complete visibility and the control needed to protect their critical control systems and most valued data assets.
Our platform was built from the ground up for breach prevention, with threat information shared across security functions system-wide, and designed to operate in increasingly mobile, modern networks. By combining network, cloud and endpoint security with advanced threat intelligence in a natively integrated security platform, we safely enable all applications and deliver highly automated, preventive protection against cyberthreats at all stages in the attack lifecycle without compromising performance. Customers benefit from superior security to what legacy or point products provide and realize a better total cost of ownership.

Ransomware, specifically cryptographic ransomware, has quickly become one of the greatest cyber threats facing organizations around the world. This criminal business model has proven to be highly effective in generating revenue for cyber criminals in addition to causing significant operational impact to affected organizations. It is largely victim agnostic, spanning across the globe and affecting all major industry verticals. Small organizations, large enterprises, individual home users – everyone is a potential target.
Ransomware has existed in various forms for decades, but in the last several years criminals have perfected the key components of these attacks. This has led to an explosion of new malware families and has drawn new actors into participating in these lucrative schemes.

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